My Laptop Bought the Farm Today…

I have been overcome by an overwhelming sense of sadness. While booting up earlier this afternoon, my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 5150, suddenly decided to turn itself off. And that is the state in which it remains….off. It will NOT power on at all. Lady Astrojets has kindly agreed to loan me her laptop so I can vent about this on my blog. Granted, it’s a blog about travel. But since it’s my blog, and I depend on my laptop when I travel…well….you get the picture.

You see, this isn’t the first issue I’ve had with this laptop. Last November, it went through another unique set of issues. It would shut down whenever I touched it. Yes, you read that correctly… It ran fine as long as I didn’t touch it. And when I did touch it, the laptop would promptly shut itself off. It was, of course, just out of warranty when that issue appeared. After speaking with “Ray” in Bombay, Dell had me ship the laptop to them for further diagnosis. Turns out my just out of warranty laptop needed a new motherboard and a wristpad to go along with it. $700 dollars later, the laptop was returned to me in fine working order. Fine working order until today, that is.

Today’s issue was different, of course. I signed on to the Dell website, and discovered that they have a very active user forum. A quick search found a plethora of threads on problems with Dell Inspiron 5150 laptops. My favorite thread that I somehow failed to not find last year was 59 pages long and had been running before my first technical issue surfaced. It seems that I’m not the only owner of a 5150 who couldn’t touch their computer. And I also learned that today’s problem is not unique either.

But…what’s a guy to do? I’ll break down and call tech support tomorrow when I’m in a better mood and see what happens. One thing that won’t happen is yours truly spending another $700 dollars on that laptop. I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy another, much lighter, model anyway. But still….I am not happy. Earth to Dell….get it together! Chances are low that my new laptop will come from Dell.

Sorry for the rant. And thanks for reading. Any suggestions for a new laptop? I’d love to hear from you.

Marshall Jackson is an aviation enthusiast and avid cruiser. After 10 years in the airline business, Marshall moved on to a new career that includes plenty of travel and plenty of cruises, and that’s just the way he likes it.